I cannot believe the scale of development from Foundryside through Shorefall to Locklands. The stakes were really upped in this trilogy finale. This book starts eight years after Shorefall and I think this was the right decision on Bennett’s part. This was everything you would want the concluding story to have, despite some sad but inevitable losses. Many thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this book.

Let’s start with the easy bits: I enjoyed this book, but it is my least favorite in the series. Okay, this was easy. And I think that can summarize pretty well all the other things I will say in this review.
Some years passed between the second installment in this series and this one, and things aren’t really going well for our characters, they are at a war, and the world at large is not faring so well. And it was a bittersweet experience meeting up with Sancia and Ber again. They are older and jaded, but they have a mission, and they won’t be swayed. Or conquered. And they are ready to do all it takes to win.

But even if the situation is bleak, and the war is not really going as well as we all hoped, and even if a lot of time passed (and even a year is infinity when you are at war) and they seem no nearer their goal than they were in the second book, they managed to create something unique. Because they sort of create a new nation, Giva, with a very very special new addition to it: Cadences (I think they were called it, but I can be misremembering them, and if it is so I am sorry for that!). I won’t say a lot about them, because discovering them for yourself is quite a pleasure, so I’ll try to be less spoilery as possible, but they basically take even further the concept of scriving, and they create something unique.
And this was one of the best features of this book because we get to see a ton of possibilities for scriving, and they are not all bad. And this is quite fantastic. And also pretty unique. Because with every new discovery people tend to find military applications for them, and then we just get the bad parts, or we get what it would profit more for the ones that are investing in it, and usually it does not end with something that can really help the normal people, in a not war like fashion at least. And this was positively stunning.
But I think that, at the same time, this was what made me enjoy this book less than the others in this trilogy.

Mind me, the best feature of this series as a whole is the world and the magical system, especially the magic system because the author did an amazing job with it, it is original, it is well developed and it is fascinating. And not only that. Because the author constantly develops on it, the scriving keeps growing and evolving, and we always get some new applications for it. It is amazing.
The author is masterful in this respect, and he does wonders. It is a brilliant system, and it has so many possibilities, and the author explores them all and presents them to you like an amazing gift.
But since he is so focused on this exploration and on this part of his books, the characters get the short stick out of the deal.
It is not that they are plain, or bi-dimensional. Not at all. The author did a really good job with them all too but… but it is not enough. Or at least, it was not really enough for me.

I am a characters-driven kind of reader, and I really need my characters to be front and center, but here the spotlight is not for them. In the previous books, things are more balanced so I was quite fascinated by the sheer amount of good things in there, but in this one, the balance is not so perfect anymore, and my enjoyment suffered from it. First thing first, I really missed Gregor and Orso, and second thing… Sancia and Clef are my favorite characters in these books, and sure we get them in this one too, but… but Berenice is the one leading the plot, and I missed the banter. I think that in part is also due to the new developments that we get with the scriving, because now they are able to be linked with each other, and to talk psychically and this took some of the fun from the dialogues too. So, if on one hand, I was really glad to get Sancia and Cleg together again, I was a bit disappointed because I was expecting more from them. Quite a lot more. And this was my main problem with the book.

So yeah, this was not my favorite, and from time to time I got bored while reading, but I think that the author did an amazing job with this trilogy, and also there is another big bonus: in this series we see our characters grew and get old and this is somehow priceless to me, I really love when we get to grow with the characters, and when we get to see them getting older (like really getting older, not just growing and getting a year or two).

So, if you haven’t already started this series, but you want to see some really intriguing magic system, go for it! And go for it right now!!!

The third and final book of The Founders Trilogy. This book takes place several years after the events of book 2.

When I start a sequel to a world that I haven't read from in a while I often start by wishing there was a little recap of what has come before.

This book jumps straight in with the action. There are high stakes for this world. It then really builds up the action around the 50% mark and does not let down until the end.

The first book remains my favourite of the series but this was a good concluding piece.

My love story with this series started with Foundryside and I never found any reason to fell out of love. The previous stories were amazing and this one is even better.
It's one of the most original and well plotted fantasy series. Something more that just a battles, magic and so on.
I loved it and I'm going to read it again and I'm sure I will found something new to love.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I received a free ARC from NetGalley and the Publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Eight years after the events of Shorefall, what is left of the free population is in the run. Trevanne, enigmatic heirophant god, wants to rectify pass mistakes and reset the world while, in the mean time, enslaving all of humanity. Sancia and Berenice must use all of their scriving talents to prevent Trevanne getting what it wants.

This is the final book of the Founders Trilogy and what a book it is! Serial capers leading to the Heist of all heists, it is non-stop action from the word go. The world building is supreme, with scriving taken to new heights. It is dark in places with some philosophical interludes but the action and the revelations keep it moving at pace.

I cannot express how much I loved this book and the trilogy as a whole. The Founders has now claimed its place as my favourite trilogy and I am running out of superlatives to describe it. Brilliant, thought-provoking and bittersweet (the epilogue had me in tears), I recommend this to everyone and look forward to any future books from the author

I don't really know what to say I've just found out that Locklands is the third of a trilogy, i started reading it and I feel I've kind of missed stuff so I want to get the first two books then read Locklands as for stars cover is great and it is Robert Jackson Bennett and I have read his stuff in the past so 4 stars im sorry i couldnt be more pro-active on this review thank you Netgalley.

CHARACTERS
🔲 mary-sue party
🔲 mostly 2D
🔲 great main cast, forgottable side characters
🔲 well-written
✅ complex and fascinating
🔲 hard to believe they are fictional

PLOT
🔲 you've already heard this exact story a thousand times
🔲 nothing memorable
🔲 gripping
✅ exceptional
🔲 mind=blown

WORLDBUILDING
🔲 takes place in our world
🔲 incoherent
🔲 OK
🔲 nicely detailed
🔲 meticulous
✅ even the last tree in the forest has its own story

ATMOSPHERE
🔲 nonexistent
🔲 fine
🔲 immersive
✅ you forget you are reading a book

PACING
🔲 dragging
🔲 inconsistent
🔲 picks up with time
✅ page-turner
🔲 impossible to put down

I can't believe this series is actually over :')

Robert Jackson Bennett just did it again. I will probably just buy everything this guy writes.

Locklands is the last book in The Founders Trilogy so talking about it without spoilers is hard, but I will do my best.

To start with the good, the characters were brilliantly written once again, I loved all the POVs and I will miss them all dearly. The pacing was just crazy, I wanted to read this book all day every day and now that I finished it I just wanna go back and reread Foundryside immediately.

But what was outstanding about this novel is how it ended this trilogy. It built on the previous books in the series, it elevated the plot, it detailed the magic system even more, which I thought was impossible. The world the author built in this series is just so vast, I loved how he showed all the potential in it with the use of timejumps inbetween the books. It brought up some themes that you usually only find in sci-fi, which I really enjoyed, but it didn't stop being epic fantasy at its core. I just love this series so much.

If you want detailed and logical magic system, great characters, thrilling plot and a satisfyingly ended trilogy, don't look anymore, this is it 🥰

An excellent closure to the brilliant series. This thing is intense, and the ending, whoa, just whoa! Longer review to come.

This is the final book in Robert Jackson Bennett's spectacular Founders trilogy. I very gratefully received an advance copy via NetGalley, with great thanks to the publisher.

I hastily reread the first two books of this series to get the most out of this final novel. And boy was the rereading helpful! These books have so much depth and interest that I had forgotten great swathes, despite foolishly thinking I knew them well. This book picks up eight years after the conclusion of Shorefall. And a lot has happened. So so much. The magic and technology has expanded and the story flies beyond the borders of Tevanne. So many interesting and challenging concepts, particularly with regards to the concept of the self. As a psychiatrist, that totally tickles my fancy.

I don't have the brain power to describe this book, but you should read it! Jackson Bennett is now a name I will immediately pick up. Hop to it!
I

In the last few years one of my absolute favorite books has been Foundryside. So it is with a fondness and a bit of sadness that I read this book, knowing I had to say goodbye to this world and characters. I loved Foundryside and Shorefall and so it was hard for this book to live up to that. It didn't. Not quite. But it is still a good conclusion to this trilogy.

Locklands starts us off 8 years after the end of Shorefall. The ending of that book changed their whole world and so the setting of our characters completely changed. No more was there Tevanne or the Houses. But a war where Sancia, Berenice and Cleff have founded an island group to keep them and the survivors safe. It gives us a very different feeling than the two other books did.

Added to that I missed Gregor and Orso. My heart aches for them. It cut our fivesome in half and I feel like we missed a lot of the interactions that those 5 had together. They were the heart to this whole thing for me and having lost them, it lost something of that to me. No matter how much I love Sancia and Cleff. The new adds just didn't feel the same because we didn't have the same history with them.

There is also the downside that I feel a bit dissapointed in who our actual enemy is. It didn't quite feel right somehow.

Having said all of that however, Locklands is still a great book. These are my nit pickings. There is still a lot of adventure and scriving to be had. Berenice and Sancia carry this book on their back and saving the world in a great way. Their love and strength were so great to read about.

It is not easy to end a trilogy, particularly one with such complex ideas and situations as the Founders trilogy. I am delighted to say that Robert Jackson Bennet sticks the landing. I could not have predicted at the end of Shorefall where this was going to go, all I knew was that I wanted higher stakes and even more playing with the magic system - and this book delivers.
I will say that you really do have to be invested in Sancia and Berenice for this to be as emotional a book as it was for me - there are fewer other characters to explore (though there are some) and nothing has quite hit the same found family motif as hard as Foundryside originally did.
The writing is the same fantastic vivid storytelling we've seen in the previous two books, RJB captures the new way of the world in such a wonderful eerie way, masterfully building tension through all of the various heist scenes we've come to expect in this series.
I thought that the plot and the way this series concluded was incredibly powerful - I can see some people not loving it but for me it was just right, I liked the ways in which the events of the previous two books come into play in Locklands and though things are quite different there is a strong continuity between all three books which makes this feel like a cohesive trilogy.
I cannot wait for more people to read this so we can talk about it together, I'm delighted to have read the whole series and I have to say if RJB ever wants to write some short stories or novellas in this world I will be first in the queue at the bookshop because I just ADORE the magic system so much.
My rating: 4.75/5 stars (only because it doesn't quiiiite match Foundryside which is a five)
I received a free digital copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley - all opinions are my own.

Book review: Locklands 3.75/5⭐️

I was lucky enough to receive an e-arc of Lockands so I could finish my obsessive binge of this series! If you haven't read Foundryside yet please pick it up it is a great series!

In Foundryside we follow Sancia who is a very good thief with a very handy power: she can hear objects. She understand scrivings and is going on a heist to steel an object that can actually talk to scrivings in order to break them apart (which she doesnt know yet). It is extremely funny even though Sancia has led a terrible life in the way she received this capability.
While in the first book you learn about the magic system, scriving, and the different merchant houses and politics. In the rest of the series you learn about survival, war and the power of gods.🌅
The first and second books were 4.5 stars for me, however the third book did not intrigue me as much as it is basically full on war with a city gone god level. While it was cool I did not really like the 15 year time jump. I would have loved an additional book in the series that shows how our main characters founded a new society, how they got married and got their scriving skills up to the absurd next level it is today. Therefore I did not really care for the start of the book, but of course was very intrigued about how this was all coming together in the end. I loved that we finally learned about Clef's background and the history behind the hierophants. Its was a very satisfying conclusion to this series!

It was great to return to the world of Foundryside and Shorefall, a fantasy universe like no other in which the very essentials of creation can be manipulated by a form of notation - 'striving' - which employed written commands and arguments to argue physical things into desired behaviours.

In previous books, we've followed the career of thief Sancia through the squalor of Foundryside in the city of Tevanne, dominated by the major striving houses, and (in Shorefall) seen her join a feisty young start-up determined to break that oligopoly. But these books are not just a disguised critique of tech culture (though that is here) and Shorefall ended with a momentous shift in power in Tevanne, as a monstrous contract emerged, a composite being with control over countless zombie 'hosts'. This new 'Tevanne' has now hunted Sancia, her wife, Berenice, and their other supporters and associates for eight years, waging war on humanity to obtain utter control of the world.

As Locklands opens, Sancia and her crew are launching a desperate mission to rescue a group of refugees from being swallowed up by Tevanne. There's the same sort of a 'caper' atmosphere to this section as in the earlier books, though the stakes are clearly incalculably higher - it's not just about stealing a little bread or business from one of the merchant houses, lives and freedom are at stake ('Move carefully and bring freedom' is a motto much repeated here - we saw in Shortfall how the Houses ascendancy is based on systemic slavery, with people, not just things, being strived: that's the basis of the Tevanne construct's heinous power and its dangerous desires).

So. A caper. But neither Sancia now Berenice is as young as they once were, and eight years of hiding and fighting has demanded a price. The writing in Locklands is never anything other than vital, engaging and fresh, but it evokes heroes who are older. Tireder. Who suffer aches and pains. Who begin to wonder, how long can I go on? I loved that note of realism. It's not just a matter of physical decay, everyone here - even immortal constructs such as Clef, the mysterious scribed key - seems to be coming to a realisation that the end is approaching, that there is so little time left.

Sancia & Co have been struggling against an enemy encumbered by a war on two fronts - it's only, they realise now, the fact that Tevanne has also been fighting the mighty hierophant Crasedes Magnus that has saved them from being overwhelmed. However, Magnus has now fallen and seems set to become. pawn of Tevanne, yielding vital information for the latter's plans.

Another caper then. A raid, an attack, a desperate gambit to deny Tevanne its advantage. The odds are enormous, hope seems faint and everyone is old and stiff. In short - the conditions for cracking adventure, new discoveries and a whole new sort of warfare.

This third and final volume of the Founders trilogy shows Robert Jackson Bennet at his peak, writing vivid, powerful language that does much, much more than register the epic battles and world-cracking conflicts that go on here. There is a vulnerability, a weakness, to everyone here (even Tevanne and even Crasedes) and a dark past to be explored to understand what made them what they are. Locklands has no true villains: in a sense everybody here has good intentions, the author showing how lack of empathy and understanding rather than bad intentions per se (that lack leading to the Original Sin of 'treating people as things') are the faults here.

The problem is, it's all unfolded over millennia, based on some very human, very understandable mistakes and faults. Some very personal, focussed mistakes and faults, never intended to break worlds or enslave millions. Yet here we are, and what's to be done?

This is simply superb, glorious fantasy writing, engaging with deep, important themes and giving us real, loving, crying, cross and suffering characters. What happens to some of them - well, you may want to keep tissues handy. The greatest of the three books in this trilogy, easily, which is saying something and if by any chance you have blundered into this review not having read the others, you really must go back and do that. Locklands would probably make sense read on its own, but why you'd want to deny yourself the glory of Foundryside and Shorefall, I really don't know,

The first two books of this trilogy were five star reads for me, with a terrific atmosphere, location and brilliantly imaginative magic system. This final volume massively increases the scale and goes full widescreen. Where the earlier books were largely set in one city this one covers a whole continent blighted by war between two impossibly powerful adversaries, and the stakes are about as high as they could possibly be. But for all the epic conflict there’s a huge emotional core and the heart of the book is about two relationships, between a father and his son and our hero Sancia and her wife, and it’s these that lead to the final satisfaction of the ending. There’s an epilogue set after all the dust has settled and it’s one of the most powerful and emotional sequences I’ve read for a long long time.

With this trilogy and the preceding Divine Cities series, RJB has produced some of the best and certainly the most original fantasy novels of the twenty-first century, and he’s at the top of my must read list.

This book ! This series ! These characters !
Oh scrumming hell how am I supposed to put into words how incredible this book is. This book left me full on ugly crying on the floor at midnight. But its not sad in the way that it wants you to be sad. Its not a book that's made to crush you. Its about hope. Its about the goodness in the world and bloody well fighting to see it - and that somehow made me cry even more.
This book is and has everything. A magic system that is written into the face of reality, that seems so real that its almost unmagical . Found family that heals your soul and queer romance that melts your heart. Characters that are so real, characters that I want to be real. Character arcs of your dream - redemption, to prove oneself, to protect your family, to let them be themselves, to live, to love, and to let go.
Through three books, more years, and some tears it comes back down to a heist
“Its like old times again. You and me against the whole goddamn world”
Except the world has changed a lot.
This is the best conclusion to a series that I have ever read - there's amazing battles and satisfying conclusion to foreshadowed clues. It all just makes sense. In a world where money means magic and everything has changed. Chasing the footprints of godlikes who came before. Can they change the world ?

Sadly I’ve totally lost interest in this series. It reads too YA for my taste and the intrigue for me is very low. I think this is a great premise but I’m not sure how much I cared about the story itself. Unfortunately missed the mark for me.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Locklands, to be honest. I really liked Foundryside and Shorefall and my lack of enjoyment of this book can be summed up in four little words:

Eight Year Time Skip.

I don’t like time skips in the middle of a series. I always feel that something is lost by jumping forward in time and Locklands is no exception. The reader is just thrown into the action with very little explanation as to what has happened in the years that have been skipped and I just didn’t like trying to reorient myself into a world I no longer recognised.

The characters just don’t feel the same either. Clef’s story is expanded on greatly and I did love that because I will always love everything about Clef but the rest of the characters seemed to have lost their shine. Sancia no longer feels like the character we all grew to love in the first two books but because we haven’t been following her journey for eight years, it’s hard to get to know this new version of her and, as a result, she just isn’t as compelling. The only other character that gets any development is Berenice and the other characters that have been so important in the other books just fade away into the background. Gregor, who was one of my favourite characters barely appears which was highly disappointing for me.

The ending saves the book from mediocrity and it’s the reason I gave the novel 3.5 stars. It’s wonderfully bittersweet and if I had been more invested in the story I might even have been moved by it.

For the most part, I just wanted this story to end. I couldn’t invest myself in the story so I was just reading to get to the epic conclusion. Bennett has created a very unique world and I can’t fault him for that and the magic system is not like anything I have ever come across before but this conclusion just didn’t live up to the rest of the trilogy with the exception of the end.

Locklands is the intense conclusion to Robert Jackson Bennetts uniquely intriguing Founders trilogy and it was action-packed from the first page to the last.

This is a world full of codes. Scrivings can be written, or rewritten, to do just about anything. This is an epic fantasy world that has fascinating magic and an altogether amazing cast of characters that is ready to become one of my favourite series. Sancia, Clef and Berenice are now fighting a war they can’t win. This time, they face a ghost in the machine that uses the magic of scriving to possess and control objects and human minds. Their unstoppable opponent is looking for an ancient doorway that leads to the centre of creation itself. Sancia and her friends have a chance of reaching it first and with it, a last desperate opportunity to stop an unbeatable foe.

Locklands is filled with non-stop action from front to back and Bennett really brings out the big guns in this one. The stakes are higher and Bennett really draws upon his descriptive strengths to show how these characters are going through constant trials and tribulations. This is not your typical epic fantasy story and instead pulls on the weirdness of reality and magic that makes it nothing short of extraordinary. Bennett really tore on our emotions in this one. It felt like one long epilogue and ties off the series wonderfully. This was a war of machinery and wit that left us emotional. The creative battle scenes, the emotional avalanches, the beautiful revelations all make for a fitting end to a uniquely fresh series.

The pacing and the plot were managed safely. Nothing was boring or dragged out and it all felt like a nice build up to an emotionally satisfying pay off. The story was character-focused and the world-building was complex and intricate. Bennett has always made the world interesting and fun and there was not a single part of this book that didn’t leave my mind blown.

Bennett has crafted a devastating system full of hope and torrent. It can be hard to finish a series as fascinating as the Founders well but Bennett has rewarded us with an incredible end and I cannot wait to read more of his work. If anyone enjoys unique stories, exciting plots, brilliant characters and a complexity that is so large in scope - check out the Founders trilogy.

Great round-up of this trilogy.
The stakes are very high. The magic/technology gets bumped up once again with some very interesting fresh takes (yes more new things after the first 2 books).
I believe almost all questions were answered and there's a clear, bittersweet ending for the main cast. What's not to love?

It took me a while to finish this book and I have to say it was good finish to the series. Not great, but good. I especially like the first chapters when action was really fast and many thing happened at once. Later it got a little door, and maybe ...a little cliche. But still, I respect the author very much and he did a good writing here. I recommend for every fan of the series.